1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle outside mirror device such as a door mirror, for example, which enables a mirror assembly to tilt (rotate or turn) relative to a vehicle body (such as a door, a fender, or a pillar, for example). In other words, the present invention relates to vehicle outside mirror devices of manual storage type and electrically driven storage type.
2. Description of the Related Art
The vehicle outside mirror devices of such types are conventionally known (for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-117710). Hereinafter, a conventional vehicle outside mirror will be described. In the conventional vehicle outside mirror device, a mirror body is turnably engaged with a shaft via a clutch, a coil spring for imparting an engagement force to the clutch is reductively provided at an outer circumference of the shaft, and a plurality of evagination stripes are formed on a receiving face of the coil spring. In the conventional vehicle outside mirror device, the clutch is disengaged by manually driving or an electrically driving it, the mirror body turns between a use location and a storage location relative to the shaft, or alternatively, if a load is applied to the mirror body that is positioned in the use location, the clutch is disengaged, the mirror body turns relative to the shaft, and then, a buffering action works. In addition, in the conventional vehicle outside mirror device described previously, when the mirror body turns, the coil spring slips on the plurality of evagination stripes of the receiving face of the coil spring, thus preventing generation of abnormal noise.
However, in the conventional vehicle outside mirror device described previously, when the coil spring slips on the plurality of swelling stripes of the receiving face of the coil spring, a tip end of the coil spring can be caught by the evagination stripes. Therefore, there is a possibility that generation of abnormal noise cannot be reliably prevented.
In order to overcome this difficulty, the Inventor of the present application previously invented a vehicle outside mirror device (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-90926) which was made to solve the problem(s) of the conventional outside mirror device described previously. In this vehicle outside mirror device, among an abutment face of a mirror assembly and an abutment face of a washer, a respective one of which abut against each other, a non-smoothened face portion made of a surface which is obtained by surface texturing is provided on at least one of these abutment faces, and generation of abnormal noise can be reliably prevented.
The present invention has been made to solve the above-described problem. It is an object of the present invention to provide a vehicle outside mirror device which is capable of preventing generation of abnormal noise further reliably and over a further long period of time.